


Holding Out For A Soulmate

by ChibiSquirt



Series: Soulgroping [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Soulmates, Telepathic Bond, more like an empathic bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2019-05-30 23:35:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15107120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChibiSquirt/pseuds/ChibiSquirt
Summary: Most folks who had a soulmate got their bond in their teens, at the cusp of adulthood.  Steve sure hadn't, though.





	Holding Out For A Soulmate

**Author's Note:**

  * For [deathsweetqueen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathsweetqueen/gifts).



> Created for the Stony Loves Steve event. My prompts included pre-serum Steve and Soulmates, so hopefully this fits the bill! Many thanks to Newsbypostcard for the beta.

“Wonder what it’s like.”

Steve was sprawled on Bucky’s bed.  He had been pretending to read a book, but the book was Shakespeare— _Hamlet—_ and for some reason, Steve couldn’t really focus.  

“What what’s like?”  Bucky was sitting half on the bed, half in the window, one leg dangling on each side of the frame.  In a year, he would be too big to fit, but for now, his nine-year-old frame could just squeeze into position.  He liked being able to look, he said. He liked the heights. Steve thought that was probably true; Bucky climbed things all the damn time.  He was so fit in the way that Steve just wasn’t.

“Having a soulmate,” Steve said.  He gestured vaguely at his book as if it explained.  Shakespeare called it a  _ meeting of minds,  _ and  _ that friendship which surpasses all the heart’s wishes.   _ Steve thought that might be just a bit much.  But also, everyone agreed that there were  _ some  _ elements of truth to that, because they all said your soulmate showed up in your head.  So maybe it  _ wasn’t  _ a bit much.

“Dunno.”  Bucky shrugged.  “Da said it was like havin’ someone who always knew your mind, but then Ma said no, it was like they always knew your heart, instead.”  

Steve thought about that, then made a face.  “What does  _ that  _ mean, though?  Knowing your heart...  How can your heart be so different from your mind?”  It sounded like the dramatic lady in the movies who fell in love with the villain, but that couldn’t be right.  Steve couldn’t imagine solid Mrs. Barnes loving someone wicked, after all, and Mr. Barnes was hardly that. He tried to imagine  _ himself  _ loving a villain, and he couldn’t do that, either.  Right and wrong were important; surely his soulmate would feel the same way.  And what else could be so serious that they would completely disagree about it?

Bucky swung his leg back and forth, making the window-frame creak alarmingly, and shrugged again.  “Guess we’ll just have to wait an’ find out.” 

He went back to his baseball cards, and Steve went back to his book, neither of them satisfied.

 

* * *

 

Most folks who had a soulmate got their bond in their teens, at the cusp of adulthood.  It was part of growing up. Bucky’s little sister Becca sure did, and boy did she cause a ruckus that morning!  Steve was over because Sarah was working the night shift again, and he and Bucky were clowning around while setting the table when Becca came screaming out of her bedroom, shrieking for Mrs. Barnes.  “Ma! Ma!!! I met him, I met him, I met him!!! I met my  _ soulmate,  _ Ma!!!”

Steve and Bucky exchanged a dismayed glance.  Neither one of them had met their soulmate yet, and Becca was younger than either of them.  Steve had four  _ years  _ on her, for crying out loud!

Still, they tried to be supportive.  They made slightly hollow congratulatory noises, and told her it was fantastic news.  All mischief they put aside in favor of getting their chores done. 

And as soon as he had a chance to slip it into the conversation, Steve asked her, “What’s it like?”

Becca went still and quiet, staring at him with round eyes.  “You don’t  _ know?”  _ she demanded incredulously.  “But... you’re so much older!”

Becca was a little  _ brat,  _ and Steve sharply regretted having been nice about the whole thing.

“Maybe his soulmate is younger than you,” Mrs. Barnes said with a huff.  “There’s no call to be rude, Becca! Now answer the man’s question.”

Steve was torn between puffing up and getting snippy at having been called a  _ man  _ in this context, but he wasn’t sure he would have preferred  _ boy.   _

Becca sighed as only a twelve-year-old could and plopped herself into her chair.  “It was like... Imagine that you wake up from a long sleep, and there’s someone holding your hand.  You can’t open your eyes yet, but you can tell they’re holding your hand. And then they squeeze. It was like that.  It  _ felt  _ like that.”

Becca was silent for a second, chewing it over, then shrugged matter-of-factly.  “I really can’t describe it any better... Sorry.”

As descriptions went, it was wholly unsatisfying.  Still, Steve tried to be gracious: he nodded, and thanked her, and then waited until all the dishes were done after breakfast to slip away and sulk.

 

* * *

 

He waited until he was twenty to give up hope.  Sure, maybe it could still happen—anything could happen—but it seemed prudent to assume that he was going to be one of the loveless.  Or, not  _ loveless,  _ but...  Only half the people in the world ever “discovered” their soulmate.  He was just going to be in the other half. That was all.

Bucky had seemed to come to the same decision, and faster: by the time he was eighteen, he was already courting just about every unattached girl in Brooklyn.  

Steve, on the other hand, celebrated the revelation by going out to the nearest gay bar and getting both sloshed and  _ thoroughly  _ plowed.

He didn’t do this often, going out.  For one thing, he couldn’t afford it: ever since his mother died, Steve had been perennially tight on funds, and he'd be damned if he was moving in with Bucky and his folks.  (Becca never had gotten any less insufferably little-sister-ish, although Steve would still take a bullet for her.) There was another good reason to stay sober, too: Steve simply wasn’t inclined towards drunkenness.  He liked feeling in control of his life, liked feeling in control of  _ himself  _ too much to tolerate the slippery-world feeling of intoxication.  It made him uneasy, being drunk. He didn’t like it.

But tonight was special, because tonight Mary and Liza were spiriting him away—no pun intended.  They weren’t really named Mary or Liza; their given names were Mark and Andrew, and they were two queens from down the block.  They had been joking about kidnapping Steve for months, and tonight, finally, he had given up. He was letting them take him out, and he was going to get fucked.  

Steve had been holding out for a soulmate, was the thing.  He had been hoping against hope that any day now a woman’s voice would uncurl in his mind, like the friendly squeeze of a stranger’s hand, and Steve would find out that he  _ wasn’t  _ a queer—that he was normal, after all.  That was possible, right? It could have happened.

But... it hadn’t happened.  And now, Steve had to admit, it wasn’t  _ going  _ to happen, either.  He was an invert, and he was alone, and it was time and  _ past  _ time to accept those two facts.

The St. George Hotel had a gay bar on the lowest level, and it didn’t take much for Steve to get what he was looking for.  Two drinks had him sloppy, but not blotto, and a come-hither look at the nearest attractive figure had him squired upstairs in short order, about to learn things he had adamantly  _ not _ been learning for years.  

It was... fine.  

Steve could take it or leave it, honestly, but all things considered he thought he had  _ better  _ leave it, because while it hurt a bit, there was a feeling of power there that he could easily become addicted to.  It was like throwing a punch and seeing the look on some asshole’s face right before it landed, or like holding a sign until his shoulders ached and knowing that he was in the right.  

Too tempting, in spite of the pain.  He had better not—or at least, not very often.

And besides, it left him feeling lonelier than ever afterwards.  No point in any of that, right?

 

* * *

 

When the  _ Valkyrie  _ went down, Steve still didn’t have a soulmate, and at last he was pretty sure he knew why.  

When he woke up again, though, there was a feeling in the back of his mind, a hand groping in darkness and holding tight to the only rope it found.  

He felt what his soulmate (his  _ soulmate!)  _ felt, unfiltered by the polite fictions of face-to-face interactions.  Stunned astonishment came through first, no doubt because this was the first time they, like Steve, had felt another presence in their otherwise-isolated mind.  Then betrayal—how could he have  _ taken  _ so long?!—and an echoing,  _ echoing  _ loneliness.  Pain. Panic.  Guilt. More shock.  

Steve had spent twenty-five years alone; the idea that it was only  _ dying  _ that brought him a soulmate...  It was a bitter pill to swallow, and his throat thickened with grief.  But without asking, in the same unspoken way he knew his soulmate was a man, Steve knew that years had passed—decades, even—and his soulmate had been as lonely as he himself had.  His heart jumped into his throat, the knowledge hitting him hard.  _ I’m sorry,  _ he thought, aching for him.   _ I’m so sorry.  I wouldn’t take it back, but I sure do wish you could’ve had someone. _

That firm mental clasp went still for a long, long moment.  Steve kept his eyes closed and his breathing steady. He tried to keep his own worry and confusion at bay, but of course his soulmate already knew about them.  And anyway, it was a losing battle; Steve was alone, and he didn’t know where, and the last thing he remembered was dying. Of course he was worried. 

There was a long, breath-rattling minute where Steve tried not to cry, or let on that he was awake, or anything else.  Then his soulmate squeezed his mind tightly, a wordless message coming over in that reassuring almost-hug: _forgiveness_ first, for all the years they spent apart; then _strength,_ to bolster Steve’s own.  And then _future:_ they would find each other.  

They would.  They  _ would.   _

With an almost physical jolt, Steve felt the idea take hold.  The familiar rightness of it burned into him, scorching away the pain like the summer sun burning away fog.  He tried to button down the excitement and trepidation coursing through him, but he could tell his soulmate felt them.  He caught one last message—a feeling of warmth, like a blush that danced along his cheekbones—and then his soulmate let go.

Steve opened his eyes.  He sat up, and looked around: he was in some kind of hospital room, they wanted it to look like.  But it was all wrong—there were a lot of things off—and he wasn’t willing to be a dupe, or even pretend for a little while.  The stakes had just gotten a lot higher. 

Once more on familiar ground, he braced himself for a fight.


End file.
